


Plagued

by quills_at_dawn



Series: Witcher Shorts [4]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Quarantine, TLC with insults, What is the point of fic if not to torture Vernon Roche?, sweet and sour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 22:53:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20016106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quills_at_dawn/pseuds/quills_at_dawn
Summary: Iorveth escapes a ship suspected of carrying the virulent Catriona plague.(Possible reunion after TW3)





	Plagued

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: I wrote this last summer for Trope Bingo. It's meant as a fun little fic but please read with discretion. Stay safe, everyone. 
> 
> I love these two so much. And I especially love torturing Roche <3 
> 
> Fills the Trope Bingo Square: Quarantine

**PLAGUED**

As the cell door clanged shut behind them, Iorveth and Roche glared at each other. 

“This is your fault!” Roche hissed. 

“I don’t have the plague!” Iorveth hissed back. 

Roche huffed and threw himself into the corner furthest from the elf. 

His day had taken a turn when Iorveth had barrelled into his study and practically fallen into his lap, shouting something about plagues and the end of the North, with five enormous Nilfgaardian soldiers and a customs official in full plate hot on his heels, shouting for him to stop where he stood. 

It had transpired that someone on the ship Iorveth had just disembarked from was suffering from a high fever and that as a precaution the entire ship and everyone who’d travelled on it was being quarantined to prevent the spread of the dreaded Catriona. 

Iorveth, in his haste, had slipped away before the checks were complete, prompting a manhunt, and since Roche had come into contact with the elf, he too was now covered by the quarantine. 

“Why did you run if you’re not sick?” 

“I thought maybe you’d put another bounty on me. Besides, I wouldn’t have wanted to be quarantined anyway.” 

“I don’t have a bounty on you and how do you know you don’t have the Catriona?” 

“We were at sea for a week, if we did have the Catriona I think we’d have noticed. Besides, I was careful. I came here to find a cure not to waste a week in quarantine.” 

“Well, a success then,” Roche said dryly, “You’ve still ended up quarantined and now I am too. Why did you even come to me?” 

“To tell you to take the stupid bounty off my head if you’d put one there and to ask fo your help,” Iorveth finished mulishly. 

* * *

In deference, perhaps, to Roche’s status as one of Temeria’s leaders, they’d been thrown into the nicest of the quarantine cells and come evening they were brought food on a tray, something that Roche himself had never bothered with, even with the most prestigious of his prisoners. 

“Am I expected to share my food with the plague rat?” Roche griped. 

Iorveth gave an exasperated eyeroll. 

“I don’t have the plague!” 

“What was that fever they spoke of, then?” 

“Just that. _A fever_.” 

“You each have a spoon,” the guard said then left. 

Iorveth pushed the tray between them, grabbed the spoons and held one out to Roche. 

“Maybe don’t touch my things in case your medical expertise is not quite as great as you think?” Roche suggested snidely. 

Iorveth looked him dead in the eyes and deliberately licked both spoons. 

* * *

“Why did you come to me for help?” Roche asked the next morning. 

They had been brought breakfast and after a night spent starving on the cold hard floor because Iorveth had taken the litter, he was just beginning to feel human again. 

The elf, despite having eaten both their portions and having slept on the litter _and_ with the blanket, looked a little dimmed and dejected. 

“Because the plague is your problem too and you’re actually in a position to do something about it.” 

“Melitele’s tits, Iorveth, I have enough on my plate.” 

* * *

With lunch they were brought a chess set, by order of Emhyr var Emreis himself, with an emperor instead of a king at the head of the black pieces. 

They played a desultory game and Roche found himself suffocating under the weight of the elf’s uncharacteristically despondent silence. 

“What did you learn about the Catriona?” he finally asked. 

Iorveth quietly recounted how he’d spent the last few months — where he’d been, who he’d spoken to, how he’d tried to coordinate the research various healers, medics and mages were undertaking to find a cure. 

As Iorveth spoke he became more animated, more like his usual passionate self, but Roche noticed the languor in his movements persisted. 

* * *

“How’s the person who had the fever?” Roche asked the guard when they were brought dinner. 

“Still has a fever.” 

Iorveth barely touched his food and soon retreated to the litter and pulled the blanket over himself. 

Roche went back to his corner, eyes narrowing as he noticed Iorveth’s shoulders tremble. 

“Iorveth, are you sick?” 

“For the last time, I don’t have the plague,” Iorveth mumbled. 

“But are you sick?” Roche insisted. 

When he got no answer he shuffled over to Iorveth and pressed a hand to his forehead. 

“You’re burning up!” he accused between gritted teeth. 

“Just a fever,” Iorveth dismissed. 

Roche banged on the door. 

“Iorveth is sick,” he barked in answer to the guard’s query. 

The guard’s noncommittal grunt seemed to imply that this was not a wholly unexpected turn of events but he soon returned with an antipyretic draught. 

“Here, drink this,” Roche said, manoeuvering himself onto the litter so Iorveth could sit up against him. 

Roche had expected the usual howled threats at touching the elf but Iorveth only managed lukewarm balefulness. 

“Aren’t you worried you’ll catch something?” 

“If you really have the Catriona then I likely do too,” Roche answered grimly, “Drink.” 

Iorveth obeyed then let his head droop against Roche’s shoulder, exhausted by the effort. 

“I don’t have the plague,” he murmured before drifting off into sleep. 

And for the first time, Roche found himself seriously wondering whether he did. 

* * *

That night, Roche barely slept. 

Partly because he found himself watching over the invalid in his lap, but mainly because thoughts that he’d quietly fought to keep at bay for months now swarmed his consciousness. 

He hadn’t lied, he had plenty on his plate even without a ravaging plague, caught between the rock that was Nilfgaard and the hard place that warn-torn Temeria still was. 

There were plenty of things, the Catriona among them, that he’d dismissed as someone else’s responsibility. His hands were full with immediate problems such as keeping the peace between squabbling lords, rebuilding a land that had been devastated by war, and creating work or finding funding for the soldiers who’d abandoned their farms to fight for the motherland. He’d had to learn on the job — how to write letters that convinced people to do as he said, how to have unpopular laws enforced, what made the economy tick. He had no particular knowledge that made him suitable to finding the cure for a plague and he’d assumed that someone else would take up that burden out of interest or self-interest. 

He brushed back a few locks of sweat-drenched hair from Iorveth's face. Even the red bandana over Iorveth’s missing eye was damp in places. 

He had wondered where Iorveth had gone after Nilfgaard’s invasion. When he’d heard nothing of him for weeks then months he’d wondered if the elf had somehow hidden within the safety of Dol Blathanna’s borders, if he’d joined forces with Nilfgaard once again, if perhaps he’d been killed. 

It came as a surprise to discover that the elf had been the one to pick up the burden he’d neglected. 

* * *

Morning came and Iorveth’s eye half-opened wearily. 

He shifted imperceptibly, pressing himself against Roche’s chest. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen.” 

Roche breathed out slowly, brushing a hand over the damp, dark hair, trying to forget everything he knew about the effects of the plague — the boils, the even higher fever, the vomiting of blood, until, eventually, the release of death. 

“Not quite the end I’d expected for us. I did always assume you’d be the death of me. Eventually. But I’d expected something more in the line of a well-aimed arrow.” 

Iorveth huffed. 

“We’ve had a good run, Iorveth. Nobody with any ambition achieves everything they set out to do. We did our best with what we were given.” 

“And all the while there were bigger forces at work. A plague on both our houses. One not at all concerned with the mould of the auricle.” 

Roche’s hand stilled. And then, very carefully, as gently as the rough commander could manage, he stroked the length of a long ear with the back of his finger. 

Iorveth blinked slowly but said nothing. 

The guard’s footsteps echoed up the corridor but Iorveth was too weak to even raise his head. 

The door was unlocked and the guard stepped in. 

“The other guy recovered. It was just a fever. You’re free to go.” 

Roche and Iorveth looked at each other. 

“Right,” Roche said briskly, “You’re coming with me. Food, a few days’ complete rest, then you can tell me what we can do about this plague.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! <3


End file.
